I was thinking about:

48 Enhancement
44 Staff
7 Rejuvenation
7 Parry

or

47 Enhancement
39 Staff
7 Rejuvenation
23 Parry

Any other suggestions?
I really don't think more points into Rejuvenation are worth it, but on the other hand i don't know if 44 points into staff are worth it. 47 Enhancement for red haste for sure, 48 for red cold resi - maybe.

Nobody is playing Friar, right?

I havent gotten the chance to play a Friar on Uthgard yet, but I've played with plenty, and theorycrafted even more. I think I have a good idea of what works for Friars in different scenarios.

For solo and smallman, I wouldnt go over 45 Enhancement. The red haste is nice, but not worth the points, imo. Raising it further is only worthwhile if you are supporting a full group with your resist buffs.

For smallman, raising your Rejuv would be a good idea (in group play, I would recommend 25 or 33, but that will cripple you solo ability). Healing is a huge boon to Friars, and if you skip it, other classes would fill your slot better in a smallman. And if you're a good duelist, you might be surprised by how often you can sneak heals in, taking advantage of snares and stuns.

Staff skill comes next in priority. Friar's Friend and your evade reactionaries are the most important, but getting up to 44 for the 8s stun is good for duelling (if you can get the side chain off reliably!).

Evade is your main form of defence, so I wouldn't recommend investing heavily into Parry. It is only helpful in duels, and even then, it won't benefit you more than investing those points into other lines would.

So, based on this analysis of your needs, I would recommend the following spec:

45 Enhance
44 Staff
18 Rejuv
7 Parry

This gives you everything necessary in the Enhancement line (until you want to get into 8mans). You get all of the good staff styles and high damage/weaponskill. You get your rez, and an okay spec heal. And you get a bit of parry, unnecessary as it is for your character. Hope this was helpful in some way!

Aelred wrote:I havent gotten the chance to play a Friar on Uthgard yet, but I've played with plenty, and theorycrafted even more. I think I have a good idea of what works for Friars in different scenarios.

For solo and smallman, I wouldnt go over 45 Enhancement. The red haste is nice, but not worth the points, imo. Raising it further is only worthwhile if you are supporting a full group with your resist buffs.

For smallman, raising your Rejuv would be a good idea (in group play, I would recommend 25 or 33, but that will cripple you solo ability). Healing is a huge boon to Friars, and if you skip it, other classes would fill your slot better in a smallman. And if you're a good duelist, you might be surprised by how often you can sneak heals in, taking advantage of snares and stuns.

Staff skill comes next in priority. Friar's Friend and your evade reactionaries are the most important, but getting up to 44 for the 8s stun is good for duelling (if you can get the side chain off reliably!).

Evade is your main form of defence, so I wouldn't recommend investing heavily into Parry. It is only helpful in duels, and even then, it won't benefit you more than investing those points into other lines would.

So, based on this analysis of your needs, I would recommend the following spec:

45 Enhance
44 Staff
18 Rejuv
7 Parry

This gives you everything necessary in the Enhancement line (until you want to get into 8mans). You get all of the good staff styles and high damage/weaponskill. You get your rez, and an okay spec heal. And you get a bit of parry, unnecessary as it is for your character. Hope this was helpful in some way!

Why do you think the red haste is not worth to spec? Red haste gives you 38% attack speed instead of 32% and if you run solo, you have no haste bot aka theurg. I really don't like the Rejuv Line - why is it a boon, the heals are terrible anyway? I would go for it and don't spec into parry if i would know that parry affect my evade in a bad way.

I also assumed that you most likely will not get that 8s stun out, at least not solo. How would you? If you stun the enemy from after evade and than go for the side-chain, he has timer on it righ? If someone mezz or root for you fine okay, maybe you can get Stunning Wrath out but else? With that 3sec after-evade you almost have no time to place that side-chain properly anyway.

How is the first HoT? Maybe you(i) could go:

47 Enhance
39 Staff
24 Rejuv
5 Parry

but just if the HoT is worht it and Parry is not.


Anyway i appreciate your suggestions.

at this patch level, hot is crap ( the 1st ), cost tons of power for bad result ...
but that's definitively the spec i'll do if i remake a friar here ( 47 enhance / 39 staff / 24 heal rest parry )

Like Cadeg said, the Friar's HoT is so bad it has zero practical use, even in PvE, imo. Can't imagine anyone using it for anything but novelty value.

As for haste, you should be running a player-crafted haste charge (which is equivalent to Theurg haste) on some lvl 1 MP item you can swap out before a fight. The 6% difference you get by going 47 will hardly, if ever, decide the outcome of a fight, whereas decent heals or an 8s stun will be an important factor in most fights you find yourself in.

As for how to get that stun off, there is an inherent, unavoidable amount of lag in DAoC's fighting system that allows players to get side and back positionals off on each other, even if the enemy /sticks you. There are also dodging techniques to deny enemies such positional styles, but fewer players know of/can do them. This will take a lot of practice, and I recommend dueling friends in Sauvage to improve your skills before you try it in the frontiers.

And if you want to go for 24 Rejuv, I would recommend going one more to 25 to get the next major heal. Don't worry too much about it anyways, respec stones are easy to come across these days, so feel free to try out whatever you want. Ultimately your play determines far more than your spec, RR, or gear, in a fight.

41 staff
20 parry
47 enh
7 rejuv

0 leftover points

best solo spec

buffs+red haste+quarterstaff (don't use slow staff) = 1.6 swing speed (cap is 1.5) .. this helps immensely to outswing pbt, rupt casters, or put the hurt on stealthers

if your gonna duo or small man mostly.. drop staff to 37 and parry to 6 and go 48 enh for heat/cold red resist and bump rejuv to 25 for good spec heal

as far as my olf experience on live as 10L+ lone enfoncer friar ...
44 staff is not worth it : depending on a 8 sec stun on second/third combo is not a good deal => if you can't land 1st or 2nd style, that's not guarantee you will land the last ( depending on your ennemy defense ), vs a caster : maybe, but vs anything with shield or some evade, you'll do your style one time in a month ..
for me, it's far better to use snare on evade ( lvl21 ) and outrun+heal than a 8sec stun with tons of luck ...
on live, at higher rr, you can drop to 42 enhance easily ( for last absorb buff ), here, i'll recommand 47/48 enhance for red resist and all other goodies you can get, can help a lot if you want to do some small man / solo ( or even some drake raid ) and can be good if you have some friend to make a 8man ...
25 heal : yes, i forgot this, major heal is defintively your objective if you want to solo/duo/small/8man, heal around 250/300 fixe is really good enough ( maybe higher with rk )
39 staff : at rr1, you don't have lot of variance, you don't have a really high ws, but you're self buff ( for solo ), and have enough tool for group too ...
parry : garbage if you try to evade/snare outrun heal ...

ps : sorry for my bad english, hope you'll understand what i want to say

Aelred wrote:Like Cadeg said, the Friar's HoT is so bad it has zero practical use, even in PvE, imo. Can't imagine anyone using it for anything but novelty value.

As for haste, you should be running a player-crafted haste charge (which is equivalent to Theurg haste) on some lvl 1 MP item you can swap out before a fight. The 6% difference you get by going 47 will hardly, if ever, decide the outcome of a fight, whereas decent heals or an 8s stun will be an important factor in most fights you find yourself in.

As for how to get that stun off, there is an inherent, unavoidable amount of lag in DAoC's fighting system that allows players to get side and back positionals off on each other, even if the enemy /sticks you. There are also dodging techniques to deny enemies such positional styles, but fewer players know of/can do them. This will take a lot of practice, and I recommend dueling friends in Sauvage to improve your skills before you try it in the frontiers.

And if you want to go for 24 Rejuv, I would recommend going one more to 25 to get the next major heal. Don't worry too much about it anyways, respec stones are easy to come across these days, so feel free to try out whatever you want. Ultimately your play determines far more than your spec, RR, or gear, in a fight.

But why should i use item charge when i could use an supperiour self buff? Like Cadeg mentioned above - in which situation do have the possibilty to bring out that 44 staff stun? Even with lag, you first have to hit 2 styles before you even can think about landing that stun and has nothing to do with strafing or positional abusing.

If the HoT is worthless it is indeed hard to decide. The cold buff seems pretty big imho, if i drop parry i could go for:


48 Enhancement
39 Staff
18 Rejuvenation
13 Parry


+24 Cold Buff sounds more valuable to me, than a bit better healing but on the ohter hand i'm not sure if the 13 parry is too low for solo runs and pve, even if evade is before parry.

Your haste spell only lasts 30 seconds, where the haste charge lasts 10 minutes, so you run the charge all the time, and your spell provides an even better haste whenever it comes off cooldown. At 44 Staff, I think you would hit reliably enough to manage a 3 part chain, but if you are not confident in it you should probably wait until you are higher RR, and better experienced on the class.

I think the spec you just suggested should be fine. It's getting pretty close to what I would recommend for a low RR 8v8 spec, but I think it will perform very well for you in smallman and solo. It certainly helps makes you more valuable for things like zerging and dragon raids, too! I don't think you'll suffer for having 13 parry. That spec is very well rounded, and I think if you start there, you'll quickly learn what you like and don't like, and can adjust accordingly.

read this thread pls, the post from Colqhoun:
viewtopic.php?f=102&t=44159

i repeat my spec here (habe ich dir ja schon ingame gesagt ):
47enh
37staff
25rej
11parry

this spec (or the 48enh variant) i would recommend every friar until he can get purge + IP + LW1 (all mandatory to solo).
only if really a pure pve player, then i would do another spec (with much more parry).